


The Ups and Downs of Cousinhood

by ImpossiblyWeird



Category: World Trigger
Genre: Border - Freeform, Friendship, cousin adventures but not really, fixing the wrongs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-25
Updated: 2016-09-25
Packaged: 2018-08-17 04:29:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8130430
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ImpossiblyWeird/pseuds/ImpossiblyWeird
Summary: Yousuke and Shiori are cousins before they are anything else. Nothing can change that.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I know that I spelled a few names wrong, but they should be similar enough. I think that the relationship between Yousuke and Shiori is interesting, and tried writing this, so hopefully you'll like their adventures-but-not-really. There's a bit of an OC in here, but they're very minor and don't do much, so please pardon them. Enjoy!

Yousuke meets Shiori when he is two years old. They can’t remember any of it, but the rest of their family always informs them that they hit it off right away. His parents do so after a long sigh, while his uncle and aunt shudder and nervously laugh. 

They never talk about the specifics, but Yousuke’s pretty sure it has to do with the fact they don’t have a dog again until he’s fourteen, any why only Aya is allowed to touch the stove until Shiori turns thirteen.

“Don’t worry,” his father laughs, “it wasn’t that bad.”

Um, considering he still doesn’t know what happened, yes, it was that bad.

They go to separate schools, and Yousuke stops seeing his cousin for a while. He still goes to their house every weekend, contrary to beliefs Yousuke does like bookshops and know how to read, and he’s pretty good at Japanese and history. The other subjects in school not so much, but hey, thought that counts.

His parents hire a tutor for him, a girl who kinda looks like Shiori and only a few years older than him, to teach him English. Their tutor is a distant relative, daughter of his father’s cousin or something, but related nonetheless. Shiori joins in on these tutoring sessions at some point, and their tutor is the dubbed the second member of the Glasses Association, second after Shiori of course. 

So his English score steadily rises. His tutor plops a set of Harry Potter books in front of the two cousins, and instructs them to read them. Yousuke had been planning to read them, action and magic and dragons, so this should be a good chance. Except the books are in English, not Japanese. But with a dictionary by his side, Yousuke finishes the series by his second year in middle school.

Aya, his other cousin, is pretty damn good at cooking. Probably because she was allowed into the kitchen starting at age seven, not thirteen. Shiori is decent once she learns, but Aya can whip up anything, from traditional Japanese sweets to ravioli. Yousuke serves as her tester, and becomes friends with Izumi because of the leftovers she had packed him. 

There’s a family gathering for Christmas one year at his house, and Yousuke meets the family members he never knew existed. His tutor is there, she has an older sister and does Yousuke only have female relatives or something, his grandparents that he haven’t seen in a while, and for some reason some family friends are invited. 

Miwa, Yousuke vaguely remembers him from the class next door, hides behind his sister. He’s never seen her either, and his tutor laughs at his distressed look before telling him that they’re here because they have nowhere else to be.

Now that’s just sad, especially on Christmas, and Yousuke gets Shiori and they march over to the boy their age. Miwa is quiet and awkward, and tries to escape Yousuke’s friendship, but all he has to do is feed him Aya’s cookies and then they’re friends. 

When the first large-scale invasion occurs, his family is thankfully safe. No houses are destroyed, and the biggest injury is his uncle’s broken leg that heals within a few months. The same cannot be said for the rest of Mikado City, and Yousuke feels relieved and guilty. 

It is Shiori who comes up with the plan to enter Border. It has been a month since the invasion, and Yousuke knows that Miwa has already joined. He’s pretty sure Izumi has as well, and rumors of popular upperclassmen joining float around the school. 

He’s always been the closest to Shiori, they were the same age and his uncle often tasked him with helping restock the book shelves when he visited the book store. Besides, it’s a no-brainer to agree. Fighting seems fun, his blood stirs at the thought of it, his restlessness never fulfilled with just sports. 

“We can help the people,” his cousin hums as she flips through the informational packet. “Learn how to protect ourselves and do something.”

He probably shouldn’t admit that it isn’t his sense of justice that makes him join, Yousuke doesn’t care about that cheesy stuff, and finding the source of his wanderlust seems to be a lame excuse. It turns out he doesn’t have a desire to leave anyways, but an urge to fight and kill wasn’t better by any means.

She is an operator while he is an agent. Shiori takes less than a year to get certified to act as a squad operator, and joins Kazama Unit. Yousuke dawdles around, acting as a solo agent for a while, but not climbing the ranks because it was hard alone. 

But then Azuma Unit disbands, and Yousuke finds himself getting swept onto Miwa’s new team. Shiori’s team gets wild success from Kikuchihara, she reaches A-Rank before he even gets a team, and more teams are forming that actually stand a chance of reaching A-Rank. Ninomiya Squad, Kako Unit, Kusakabe Unit are among the top, where Tachikawa Unit currently stands. It’s a bumpy road, but fighting is so incredibly fun and Yousuke has found friends, and it’s so great.

Until Shiori reveals that she’s transferring to Tamakoma, the branch known for supporting Neighbors. Now, Yousuke doesn’t have any problems with that. But Miwa does, and he finds himself spending less and less time with his cousin, because time could be spent training with Narasaka, trying (and failing) to make strategies with Tsukimi and Kodera. Someone strong has just joined Arashiyama Unit, Kageura Squad is rising, and they have no time to socialize with the enemy.

The paperwork rises with their rank, Tsukimi enforces bonding activities on top of the training sessions, and Yousuke is stressed out. Someone from the Business Department tries to give Shuji therapy, but his captain lashes out at the poor person until they refuse to do their team’s paperwork anymore. But a picture of Shuji’s sister winds up in their operating room that was definitely not there before, which Ren tacks up to the wall despite their captain’s protests.

It is Ren who insists he go visit Shiori. “It doesn’t matter if her views on Neighbors are different from Shuji’s,” she points out, her voice calm and soothing. The operator takes the stack of paperwork from him, and doles it out between the two snipers and her, Shuji at a meeting with the other captains. “After all, you probably would have joined Tamakoma if you hadn’t met our captain.”

Her words make Yousuke think. Would he have joined Tamakoma if Shuji hadn’t found him? If, say, Jin or Branch Director Rindo had? And then Yousuke knows that yes, given the opportunity, he would have joined Tamakoma. If Azuma Unit had stayed together, if Shiori had joined Tamakoma earlier and convinced him to leave with her, if he had been given the chance, if a million other things hadn’t gone the way they had.

But he hadn’t been invited. Yousuke can dwell on that more, but Jin’s foresight comes to mind rather than the sting of rejection. Shuji needs him right now, needs Ren, Shohei, Toru. And for that, he can deal with their views on Neighbors, because when the time comes, he’ll need to reign them back in. And honestly, this scares him. 

For now, he simply runs to Tamakoma to find Shiori. She forgives him, a smile quirking up when she sees how exhausted he is. He gets placed on Yotaro babysitting duty, but the kid isn’t that bad to hang around with. Probably because he will never be mature, and when Konami joins him in playing video games with the little brat Yousuke finds one more person who will never mentally age. That’s not a good thing, is it?

Time starts to fly as Yousuke routinely visits Tamakoma, battling Karasuma or Konami since he’s there anyways. Konami beats him every time, and Yousuke manages pretty well against Karasuma until his special Trigger gets built and then he wins maybe one out of ten times. Miwa Unit has been A-Rank for a month now, and Yousuke rushes to the R&D guys when Shohei suggests he get a spear. He loves his spear. 

Yousuke still goes to the book store, he’s gotten into a habit of reading English adventure novels instead of the Japanese translated ones, and after he can’t find the second book of the Narnia chronicles anywhere in his operating room he’s pretty sure Toru stole it. He replaces the third with a romance story, which Toru must have read because it’s gone for a month. 

But then the abnormal gates start to occur, Izumi and a bunch of others are on an away mission, and Shuji starts his Neighbor preaching again. Yousuke doesn’t see Shiori for a month, the longest time since the paperwork overload, and hasn’t been to Tamakoma in two. Toru and Ren deal with one of the gates, Suwa Squad near them thankfully, while Yousuke is with Midorikawa when another one pops up. Needless to say, the Neighbors don’t last long. 

Then something weird happens. A gate opens in the Forbidden Zone, and Miwa Unit should be the first on the scene. But the Bamster is utterly smashed, the concrete in an even worse state and he had to do the paperwork for it didn’t he, and no one from Border has done it. Shuji calls for an investigation, which reveals that an unknown trigger has caused this. It’s not even Tamakoma, the place with the most exotic triggers, and they all realize at the same time that it’s a trigger from the Neighborhood. 

Mikumo Osamu becomes their main target, Jin interferes a lot, and somewhere between accusing a little girl of being the trigger-wielder and finding out that it’s a white-haired shrimp, they get defeated really badly. Jin reveals that the Neighbor has a black trigger, Shuji rants, and boom their paperwork racks up. 

Then he’s given the order to stalk Mikumo and the shrimp some more, well Shohei does the stalking while Yousuke eats his bread, but he's given the order. The top teams come back, they launch an attack, and of course they get stopped. Yousuke beats himself up for getting defeated so easily by Kitora. Shuji beats himself up even more. Toru’s annoyance towards Toma grows, and Shohei and Ren don’t care. 

But the kids have joined Tamakoma, and his stomach flops around as he remembers Ren’s question. And Shiori. He had practically waged war against his cousin. Her branch, but Shiori occupies his thoughts the most because she is his cousin and what has he done.

Yousuke shows up to Tamakoma one day, Arashiyama is there to see Konami or something, Tachikawa is demanding a battle with Jin, and Shiori lights up when she sees him. Yotaro lets him pet Raijinmaru, Jin gives him fried rice crackers. A plate of Aya’s cookies is there, and he shoves five into his mouth when he remembers he hasn’t seen her in four months.

“I’m sorry,” he says lamely to Shiori when he’s on the roof with her. The sun is starting to set, the new recruits have arrived based on Konami’s shrieks, and the smell of Reiji cooking drifts in the air. 

Shiori laughs, twisting her hair up into a bun as she stared at the city. “We’re cousins. That means I forgive you. Now if you had glasses, then you would be invincible. Oh! Our new recruits are pretty cool, one has glasses and…”

Yeah, Yousuke would be doomed if he lost his cousins, any of them. Because Aya makes food that’s perfect for bribery and just amazing in general, his tutor from before helps with his paperwork and gives him books. And because Shiori is well, Shiori, who can take care of people pretty well, has a weird obsession with glasses, who reached A-Rank before him, who is so very strong in her own way. Even if they’re rivals, teammates in special circumstances, they are cousins before all that.

And he wouldn’t have it any other way.


End file.
